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Matt Damon on putting family first: 'It just has to be the priority'

When Matt Damon visited TODAY to talk about his starring role in "The Martian," he also opened up about balancing his busy film career with his family.
/ Source: TODAY

When Matt Damon visited TODAY to talk about his starring role in "The Martian," he also opened up about balancing his busy film career with his family.

"It's pretty easy," the actor told Natalie Morales in an interview that aired Monday. "Usually, we're all together. Sometimes it's challenging, but like we were talking about before, it just has to be the priority."

And while most of Damon's brood may be too young to have seen his movies, he said 17-year-old Alexia "has seen all of them" — at least, "all the ones she wants to see."

Actor Matt Damon and wife Luciana Barroso
Matt Damon and wife Luciana Barroso attend "The Martian" premiere during the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.Getty Images

But despite being a Hollywood A-lister, Damon, 44, can relate to most fathers.

"Dad is not cool," he said. "You're not cool to your own kids. You're kind of 'dorky dad,' no matter who you are."

Damon, who has four daughters with wife Luciana Barroso, said that their full house made it a little difficult to relate to his character in "The Martian," who's stranded alone on Mars.

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"That's actually not a feeling I can relate to, because I have four kids," he said. "I just sometimes want 20 minutes by myself in my house."

But he said the premise of the movie, based on Andy Weir's 2011 novel of the same name, is what really drew him to the project.

"Could a guy survive if he is really highly trained on Mars by himself? It's just this really neat story of this guy doing everything that one would have to do to live on this totally inhospitable planet," Damon said.

Matt Damon, Ben Affleck
LOS ANGELES, CA - AUGUST 10: Actors Ben Affleck and Matt Damon attend the Project Greenlight Season 4 Winning Film premiere \"The Leisure Class\" presented by Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Adaptive Studios and HBO at The Theatre at Ace Hotel on August 10, 2015 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Angela Weiss/Getty Images)Getty Images

"The Martian," which hits theaters Oct. 2, isn't Damon's only upcoming blockbuster. He's also currently working on the fifth installment of the "Bourne" franchise — and believes the timing is right for Jason Bourne's return to the big screen. (The last installment, "The Bourne Legacy," was released in 2012.)

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"I think enough had changed in the world that we were like, 'What would Jason Bourne think about this all now? In a post-Snowden world, what does that character look like?' I mean, we love these movies as much as anybody. They're a big part of our lives. We spent a lot of years on those. We just wanted to make sure we could make something good."

And finally, talk turned to Damon's decades-long friendship with Ben Affleck, and whether we'll see them together onscreen anytime soon.

"Yeah, we have a company together. We're constantly developing stuff," Damon said. "It's just, you want to have to find the right project. We want to work together, obviously, it's just that we want to get it right."